[HN Gopher] The joys and sorrows of maintaining a personal website
___________________________________________________________________
The joys and sorrows of maintaining a personal website
Author : airhangerf15
Score : 107 points
Date : 2022-05-06 17:29 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (cheapskatesguide.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (cheapskatesguide.org)
| noizejoy wrote:
| My main detriments to publishing on the web continue to be:
|
| The less obvious and not already widely covered stuff is very
| situation dependent. i.e. Most advice I could share is incredibly
| nuanced and some of it may flip 180 degrees, depending on the
| particular context of the person looking for advice or help. --
| And I don't necessarily pre-think all possible situations - which
| is also a big human problem, when making software or laws and
| everything in between.
|
| The "right" advice changes over time, because everything from
| technology to human value systems evolve ever more quickly. So
| today's wisdom may end up tomorrow's deadly sin. And when the
| Internet doesn't forget, a well meaning post today may become a
| big mortgage on the future.
| pcmaffey wrote:
| Advice rots. As you describe, it's context specific.
|
| Stories on the other hand, are ageless. When well written they
| take on a life of their own.
| bachmeier wrote:
| > After I had written my first 30 articles, I thought I had said
| everything I wanted to say. That was three years ago, and yet,
| somehow I have continued putting out fairly regular content.
|
| Finding things to write about is not the bottleneck (for me). I'm
| willing to bet I could make a list of 1000 things to write about
| if I cared to make such a list. The reason I don't post more on
| my website is because it's rarely the best use of my time. I
| would create some value with another post, but not a lot, so I
| focus on higher-value tasks.
| [deleted]
| thaway2839 wrote:
| The destruction of RSS greatly damaged the Blogging ecosystem.
|
| It used to be that if I followed a /. link to an article on a
| blog that I enjoyed, I'd immediately subscribe to their RSS feed.
| I'd made a collection of a few hundred blogs related to computer
| science alone this way.
|
| At the time I was on a mac, and NetNewsWire was THE RSS reader of
| choice (backed by Google Reader for syncing feed info) and every
| morning I'd click on the folder which housed those 100s of blogs,
| and would probably find 10-20 posts, skim through them in
| minutes, only reading those that seemed interesting to me in
| depth. NNN also made it extremely easy to open the post on the
| original website in a background tab, so I'd keep opening them in
| the background if I wanted to read it, and then just go through
| all the background tabs.
|
| It was an amazingly efficient system of following hundreds of
| independent blogs that were offering uncurated first person
| information.
|
| I haven't found anything today that comes close to recreating
| that system, and I can't imagine even finding the kinds of
| articles I did through this process (an example...I had an HP
| MediaSmart server, and one day someone randomly posted a How to
| on replacing the CPU on it with a newer CPU...it was an easy
| process that cost me about $7 to buy the compatible faster chip
| on eBay, and a couple of dollars for the heatsink gel). And lo
| and behold, a week later, everything was running so much better.
|
| Changing the CPU on the Mediasmart server was something I
| wouldn't even have considered searching for, and even if I did,
| I'm not sure Google would have turned up anything useful.
| lelandfe wrote:
| Dunno why so much of this is in past tense - everything you
| named still works the same. I use NNN every day (though my
| reading list is smaller: around 30). If there's a blog that
| doesn't have a feed, I'll just use a scraper to make one for
| me. Works like a charm!
| dflock wrote:
| RSS didn't die, though? I still do this and it works fine?
|
| This is optional - but I use Miniflux as a locally hosted RSS
| server, so that I can keep the feed list etc on there and
| access it from my phone, desktop etc... using my client of
| choice.
| eropple wrote:
| _> RSS didn 't die, though? I still do this and it works
| fine?_
|
| If your publishing platform supports it, RSS is still pretty
| good. On the other hand, I'm building my current blog with
| NextJS (both to learn it and because I like React a lot more
| than I do the Wordpress loop) and I am making sure to do
| RSS...but it's a lot harder than it used to be.
| kenniskrag wrote:
| Which client do you use? I'm searching one for android.
| crtasm wrote:
| I'm pretty happy with Handy News Reader, gets used every
| day. Appears to be on the play store as well as on f-droid.
| dzikimarian wrote:
| I installed miniflux recently and for now I'm using its web
| interface, shortcut to which I pinned to my launcher. It's
| very fast, so possibly I'll stay just with it.
| [deleted]
| ufmace wrote:
| > The destruction of RSS greatly damaged the Blogging
| ecosystem.
|
| Since when is RSS "destroyed"? I still use it every day.
|
| Okay Google Reader specifically died. But honestly it wasn't
| all that great. There are dozens of other RSS readers that
| still work fine.
| dhosek wrote:
| What bugged me was when Apple removed RSS from Safari. I used
| to have a menubar list of sites that I would read regularly
| and I could go to the bottom and select open all in RSS and
| read everything. Having to use a dedicated RSS reader really
| feels like a step backwards.
| the_third_wave wrote:
| > Having to use a dedicated RSS reader really feels like a
| step backwards.
|
| Not if you use a web-based RSS reader (I use Nextcloud News
| for this purpose) since that is always just one link away
| on any browser you might happen to use. This is far more
| convenient than having your 'feeds' in a specific browser
| on a specific device.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| It's noteworthy this blogger actually tells me if I don't
| change the settings on my RSS feed reader, he will ban me from
| reading his site. I decided to subscribe, but this is the first
| time I've ever had to change the update interval in my feed
| reader.
|
| This isn't really a shining example of good encouragement for
| people to use RSS feeds.
| SCUSKU wrote:
| I was born in 1997, so I wasn't really around or aware of the
| whole "hacker" scene. But this to me seems to be some of the most
| genuine expression of the "hacker" ethos. Doing things out of
| passion, stoically, knowing that your efforts will most likely
| fall upon deaf ears. But still putting out a signal into the vast
| ocean of information on the internet, hoping that someone with a
| similar mind will find you and connect. It is beautiful, and it
| is also deeply tragic. The society we find ourselves living in
| has stripped away the ability for humans to fully embrace their
| humanity. Oftentimes doing so is is stigmatized, or even a crime.
| Personal websites, and blog posts like this are like matches
| being lit in a pitch black forest. I feel lost, and alone in this
| modern day life, but I see, even if just an ephemeral glimpse,
| that there is someone out there, somewhere, struggling, like me,
| living. And this gives me hope. Thank you for this blog post, it
| has brought me joy today.
| severak_cz wrote:
| I think this is really different in other countries.
|
| For example here in Czech republic we have lot of reasonably
| cheap hosting companies and whole backyard industry of small
| companies and individuals willing to create website for you.
| Barrera wrote:
| > After I had written my first 30 articles, I thought I had said
| everything I wanted to say. That was three years ago, and yet,
| somehow I have continued putting out fairly regular content. This
| amazes me, because I do not know how I am doing it. Ideas just
| come, and many of them are actually good, meaning they have value
| to readers. Though most of my best writing does not attract
| exceptionally large numbers of readers, at times when I have been
| very lucky, a few of my articles have brought tens of thousands
| each to my website.
|
| This is an under-appreciated part of regular writing. If you want
| new ideas, one of the best ways to do that is to write. One way
| to uncover progressively deeper ideas is to stick to the same
| topic. This is not easy because in the back of your head may be a
| voice telling you to try to get more readers. It's a diversion.
| Go deep instead. The Internet is filled with surface-level
| discussions of just about every topic. What it will never have
| enough of are deep-dives written by an expert.
| papandada wrote:
| There's a writer (I want to say Annie Dillard, but I'm not
| finding it) who said -- don't store up all your best ideas for
| a rainy day, because invariably when you do open that box,
| you'll find it empty. Only and always work on the best you have
| at the moment.
| lettergram wrote:
| First, you shouldn't blog for others. I did it to index my
| knowledge, practice writing and document my thoughts. I almost
| consider them my public notes.
|
| I'm in the category of a casual personal blogger. That said, Ill
| have articles get >100k unique views once or twice a year,
| average 25k views a month. I share the articles and people like
| them. That's about it. Some of my niche stuff ranks on Google and
| DuckDuckGo because I did something people found interesting
| (hence the regular traffic).
|
| My last update was Feb 7, 2022 so it's not as if I'm active. And
| my most detailed analysis https://austingwalters.com/firearms-by-
| the-numbers/ actually receives relatively low traffic (it's a
| censored / touchy subject and took me six weeks to write).
| However, it was something I did to understand a topic myself and
| have shared with others as it's come up.
|
| I took joy in writing it and frankly assumed it was a purely
| intellectual exercise. If you go for clicks, you don't pick
| censored / deranked content, but imo that's where interesting
| topics actually are.
|
| Anyway, a bit of a ramble. I just find it interesting people
| start blogs for traffic. Instead it should be intellectual
| exploration first, then sharing second. Those are the blogs I've
| always enjoyed anyway.
|
| If you want traffic you need a regular topic you cover. Most
| personal blogs are life events, which is covered by social media
| now. Blogs are for long-form content and can cover more
| practically what I would call essays or research topics.
| FourthProtocol wrote:
| I note that many blog on their personal web site. I decided
| against that back in the early 2000's, when it got popular - I
| just didn't want to face not having a clue what to write about
| next. The site's always been hosted with a commercial hosing
| provider. I've travelled a bit, and that meant my site could live
| on even if I moved yet again.
|
| So I just use it to write down stuff I thought inetresting. I add
| new stuff very occasionally, and refer to it often, to this day.
| It's expanded (and sometimes contracted) with non-work stuff
| (hobbies, photos for the overseas family - although I could do
| more on that front).
|
| And so I have no real expectation of myself to continually
| provide new content, or keep up with the latest hosting software
| and [at home] infrastructure. It receives lots of traffic for the
| 4x4 guide I wrote in 1998, and the consulting reference pages. I
| don't care for the traffic, but glad people find it useful. As
| long as it remains useful to _me_ I 'll keep it going, and call
| it a success.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| > The enemy possesses every advantage. Personal website owners
| are nearly always just ordinary individuals. They often have
| glacially slow upload bandwidths, [...]. The enemy has seemingly
| unlimited funds, massive resources, acres of server farms,
|
| One example of this is Googlebot "attacks". I have a personal,
| mostly static website that I've been serving from a home
| connection for over 25 years, upgrading the hardware and moving
| it with me as I relocated. Out of these 25 years, Google has been
| number #1 user of bandwidth, CPU time, and as a consequence the
| #1 generator of headaches.
|
| During the mid 2000s I had numerous problems keeping the site
| online since the Google crawler would just effectively DDoS it,
| sending tens of concurrents requests completely ignoring the
| Crawl-Delay in robots.txt (and most of robots.txt, fwiw). Mind
| you, this was not the most powerful hardware you could find,
| since it had to be quite low power to be left 24h on, but it was
| perfectly able to serve the handful of connections per hour I
| expect out of my website.
|
| Obviously your only alternative is to just ban the entire Google
| IP range and as a consequence disappear from the Internet.
| Nowadays the problem is less noticeable because my 1-2W server
| can handle the onslaught brought by Googlebot just fine, but they
| still ignore the Crawl-Delay.
| hinkley wrote:
| I really wonder if this is an area that would be best served by
| creating a cooperative, allowing you to spread some of this
| knowledge and troubleshooting across a larger number of humans.
|
| But that's fundamentally a social problem, and the field of
| software is nothing if not consistent in its resolve to try
| every other solution before resorting to emotional work. Co-ops
| that try to come up with a set of rules to handle all
| situations end up failing, because rules-lawyering turns into a
| game to be won by some people, at the expense of everyone else
| (see also, HOAs).
| japhyr wrote:
| I just made the first new post on my personal blog in almost two
| years. Because it's a self-hosted site that I step away from for
| long periods of time, I accidentally rsynced my entire .git/ repo
| and some supporting scripts before finding the simple deploy.sh
| file I wrote last time I messed things up. :)
| user_7832 wrote:
| The timing of this post is quite impeccable - just a few days ago
| I finally went ahead and paid for a domain, to set up a personal
| blog (despite having decided to make one several years back). I
| would like to ask fellow HN bloggers, what were some of the
| unexpected things you encountered in your process? (I'm more
| curious about the experience, though I am also interested about
| more technical details.)
| scottlilly wrote:
| I've had my personal domain since 1999. It was originally hand-
| coded HTML, but has been WordPress for at least the last eight
| years.
|
| Back in 2014 I wrote a beginner's guide to C#, with the lessons
| building a very simple (non-graphical) role playing game. It
| was mostly to show the thinking behind starting out very
| simple, with the basics of objects, and eventually build a
| program that is larger and "complete".
|
| It got a little popular and I've received quite a few
| messages/comments from people who've told me the lessons helped
| them understand things better in their programming courses at
| college or code camps. Those messages have been a lot more
| fulfilling than being coder #12 on $BigCo's multimillion-
| dollar, multi-year project.
|
| It's also a nice thing to point to when interviewing. Just like
| a public GitHub repo, I doubt most interviewers take more than
| a cursory glance at it, but it is a way to stand out from the
| crowd of candidates who don't have a technical blog.
|
| I've had times when I've burnt out and haven't posted for a
| year or more. Other times, I get a burst of energy and write
| every day. There is a bit of pressure to feel like I should be
| writing and posting. And, since I have programming guides,
| there are occasional support questions to answer (especially
| when Microsoft changes Visual Studio or moves from .NET
| Framework to .NET Core then to .NET 5/6). But, it usually
| doesn't take too long to deal with that.
|
| On the technical side, it has been a bit of a pain to go
| through web hosts every few years. The hosting service
| eventually gets bought out, service quality goes down, or the
| site gets slow (and support says, "It looks OK to me"), etc.
| user_7832 wrote:
| Thank you for your insights. I think the variability in
| writing is something I'm also going to personally experience.
| That feeling of satisfaction and happiness sounds great -
| good for you, and also thank you for offering such useful
| content for free!
| AndrewStephens wrote:
| Congratulations on your new blog - if you already have content
| up consider posting it here.
|
| I wrote [0] and [1] with people like you in mind:
|
| [0]
| https://sheep.horse/2017/4/so_you_want_to_start_an_unpopular...
|
| [1]
| https://sheep.horse/2017/4/some_additional_advice_for_those_...
| BaseballPhysics wrote:
| Well, I can say, as a person who's been running a blog since
| 2003 or so, if you're planning a long-running online presence,
| building a site based on technology that makes it relatively
| easy to move to different technology platforms is really
| important. a) it future-proofs your site so you can move as the
| technology moves, but also, b) the odds are you'll end up with
| content that's easier to back up, manipulate, etc.
|
| The first iteration of my blog was based on an old wiki engine,
| and the beauty of that engine was that, while the markup format
| was unique, the data was stored in flat text files that I could
| easily manipulate.
|
| Some number of years back, now, I moved to a static site
| generator that uses Markdown as the source format, and since I
| was dealing with flat files, I actually had a fighting chance
| of making the switch fairly easily.
|
| And now that everything is just Markdown, I can version control
| it with git, back it up easily, etc. And again, if I decide to
| switch technologies in the future, I can do that because the
| content is stored in a format that's very easy to manipulate.
|
| And thinking very long-term, this kind of approach ensures that
| archiving your digital legacy will be a lot easier, since the
| content isn't tightly bound to a specific technology.
| user_7832 wrote:
| Thanks for your comment, that (tech getting depreciated) is
| something I hadn't consciously considered. I also think
| Markdown is a really solid idea for anything that doesn't
| need to be very fancy (like most blogs).
| noizejoy wrote:
| Well put - and maybe also worth noting, that the same issue
| also applies to media formats.
| z3t4 wrote:
| Web hosting is "economy of scale" which means hosting one site
| cost a lot, but hosting +1 site costs very little for that extra
| site, so if you are technical enough to run your own server, also
| host other people's web sites!
| readingnews wrote:
| I have run my own site, on my own domain (with email!) since
| 1994. The domain was lost and recaptured in 1998, so I suppose by
| the registrar, since 1998...
|
| I go through spurts of updating and then not updating it. Some
| parts of this article resonate with me... is it worth it? Does
| anyone care? Will anyone ever see it? At the same time, if you
| view it as an item for ones self, then all of those pressures go
| away.
|
| I think people do not realize the power they have (or they always
| make it out to be a much larger problem than it is) to run ones
| own server (perhaps both web and email). Before you flame, I have
| been setting up web/email for decades, and there are plenty of
| online tutorials (I wrote a few). The real point is that even
| with a little effort, the rewards are interesting. It is not for
| everyone, but I think the DIY spirit has a place here (in web
| pages and personal systems on the net).
|
| Sorry for rambling, I feel compelled to say something... so many
| comments in other threads turn into "you can never keep up with a
| web or email server". I feel this person needs kudos for showing
| that it is really not too difficult.
| fsiefken wrote:
| Hi readingnews, I see the benefits of creating your running
| your own site/blog/bliki/digital-garden on a hosted or even
| your own server. You can tweak and make it into whatever you
| want. But what's the joy or reward of running your own mail
| server? I can imagine the feeling of being independent. But I
| imagine it also creates a bit of stress in keeping the email
| server running, spam free and secure?
| noizejoy wrote:
| One person's stress is another one's bliss
| readingnews wrote:
| > I can imagine the feeling of being independent.
|
| Seriously, this is a total stress reliever. A ton of things
| are tied to email. What am I paying gmail or fastmail or whom
| ever? Nothing? Oh, so they can turn it off whenever, or lock
| me out or whatever, for no reason. Not with my own server.
|
| > But I imagine it also creates a bit of stress in keeping
| the email server running, spam free and secure?
|
| Again, I used to maintain the gentoo HOWTO on
| postfix/amavisd-new/spamassassin before the wiki crashed and
| someone else redid it. I have setup so many corporate wide
| spam filters... there is no stress in it.
| the_third_wave wrote:
| No stress and hardly any work once you get the configuration
| right - which usually comes down to configuring a smart
| server for outgoing mail, one or more domains for incoming
| mail and some form of spam filtering - Spamassassin being a
| good candidate. Make sure your user's passwords are up to
| snuff and the software is up to date (which can largely be
| automated) and the total maintenance time is usually quite a
| bit less than 8 hours per year.
|
| * Exim or Postfix as MTA
|
| * Dovecot as MDA, add managesieve and you'll be able to
| sort/filter/file mail based on just about any combination of
| criteria
|
| * Spamassassin to keep out all those offers you can't refuse
|
| * Roundcube or Rainloop for web mail, looking at the same
| IMAP account as you use on your other devices
|
| I've never had any of my servers 'hacked' in those 26+ years.
| Jach wrote:
| Many things tech people do are basically equivalent to having a
| little garden in the back yard. Gardening isn't for everyone
| either. Especially if weeds keep you up at night, or the idea
| that an apache 0-day might drop any second and bots might take
| over your old LAMP site before you get around to ssh'ing in and
| updating it, these sorts of pastimes are probably not for
| you...
| the_third_wave wrote:
| I've been running my own services since around 1996 and have
| never looked back. The scare stories told by those who either
| can not or do not want to run their own services and for some
| reason feel the need to dissuade others from doing so are just
| that, scare stories. Running your own services may not be for
| everyone but then again, what is?
|
| From the 486DX2-66 under the stairs via the Pentium-90-under-
| the-stairs, the BP-6 with dual overclocked Celeron-333s, the
| re-purposed Virgin Webplayer when I emigrated and needed
| something small and light while looking for a house, the Intel
| SS4200 and now a DL380G7 (under the stairs, of course), from
| Slackware via Redhat to Debian, from a hand-crafted Sendmail
| config to Exim, from a time when spam was non-existent to a
| time when spam is something which seems to bother others but
| which is stopped in its tracks at the gates it has been one
| unbroken chain of enjoying the freedom of being in control.
| jasonthorsness wrote:
| I struggled for some time with maintaining my own site (in
| profile), as it felt so disconnected from the conversation.
| Eventually I realized what I really wanted was a more
| customizable/flexible version of Twitter that could do things
| like host WASM - so I recreated my site to be more of a
| complement to Twitter threads rather than a standalone
| experience. The article author seems to be taking a strong stand
| against corporate web but I think a highly integrated yet fully
| owned personal site could be a good alternative approach.
| sircastor wrote:
| There was a brief time where I thought i could write regularly
| and make money off of having a commercialized personal site. It
| turned out that it wasn't for me. I pay the bills every year and
| I write somewhere between 0 and 5 posts a year. They're usually
| write-ups about projects I have completed, or interests I'm
| pursuing.
|
| It's really nice to not have to worry about how popular something
| is or isn't on my site. And occasionally I'll have someone send
| me a note saying thank you for some helpful piece of information
| they found there.
| cturtle wrote:
| > And occasionally I'll have someone send me a note saying
| thank you for some helpful piece of information they found
| there.
|
| This is related to one of the reasons I like having a personal
| website. Countless times I've found answers or learned
| something cool from another's personal website, and I hope that
| I can help other through my efforts.
|
| The original article mentioned something about not being able
| to change the world through a personal website. You can have an
| impact in a persons life though, and I think that makes it
| worth it.
| ghaff wrote:
| A few years ago I flirted with the idea of doing a more serious
| and focused travel-oriented site and went so far as to get a
| Wordpress site for it but the ambition lasted for about a
| month.
|
| My site is mostly pretty static. There's a fairly nice
| templated front-end but the actual content is just on some
| fairly simple, mostly hand done HTML. My actual blog is on
| Blogger but a lot more of my content goes in other places these
| days. That may well change in the future (again).
| throwawayboise wrote:
| The cost of a VPS where you can host stuff like this is far
| less than a Netflix subscription. You can just do it for the
| entertainment or satisfaction that it provides without worrying
| about what it costs or "monetizing" it.
| kaashif wrote:
| > And occasionally I'll have someone send me a note saying
| thank you for some helpful piece of information they found
| there.
|
| I do exactly the same thing! And for exactly the same reasons!
|
| I just occasionally write to crystallise my thoughts. Sometimes
| I get insights just by writing up a project, in the same way I
| sometimes think of an answer while writing a question into
| StackExchange.
| gernb wrote:
| My path was perl -> php -> wordpress -> static generator + disqus
| and dealing with spam pre disqus (for me, wordpress' anti-spam
| features didn't work, kismet, etc...)
|
| I'm sure there are solutions but the problem I have with a static
| generator is that unlike wordpress I have no online preview. Sure
| I can run the generator on my local machine, even setup some
| watch build so I can update and refresh but I use 7 machines
| regularly. With wordpress, any machine let me draft a new post
| and pick it up else where and preview it but ATM I've lost that
| feature.
|
| Maybe (it's hosted on github), I could setup a staging repo and
| have it build PRs to a staging site but a full PR is way more
| work than just typing and clicking 'preview' in wordpress. To
| add, my site does some processing that would be not be previews
| just using github's markdown preview in the editor.
|
| I don't know if that's why I blog less than I used to but it is
| arguably friction. If I think of something to write I need to be
| in front of the correct computer with stuff synced and setup and
| if I don't finish I need to check in the unfinished article in
| some draft position, then later check it out on some other
| machine, and finally when it's done, move it to a folder that is
| used in the build.
|
| It also takes me serious time. A typical post would take 4-8hrs.
| Write, proofread, edit, add pictures or diagrams. Just barfing
| thoughts out is twitter/facebook.
|
| Otherwise, I think I just have less to write. I started blogging
| in the 90s selfishly, it was way more fun when it felt special.
| Now everyone writes (twitter, facebook, medium, etc...) so not
| nearly as special.
| z3t4 wrote:
| I've solved it for my own needs by making https://webide.se/
| which is an web based editor with a Linux shell and my
| homegrown static site generator with live preview. If you host
| your repo on Github try
| https://webide.se/?github=/githubuser/repo/
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| Why not go back to WordPress? It sounds like it was working
| well for you. It may not be the shiniest tech anymore, but
| often, boring tech is good [1].
|
| [1] https://mcfunley.com/choose-boring-technology
| rajlego wrote:
| I wish more of the people posting about how they've had blogs for
| decades would link the blogs
| AndrewStephens wrote:
| Does 1.5 decades count? [0]
|
| I even have a similar article about blogging (old but still
| relevant, I think)[1]
|
| [0] https://sheep.horse/everything.html
|
| [1]
| https://sheep.horse/2017/4/so_you_want_to_start_an_unpopular...
| metalliqaz wrote:
| Imagine going back to the nineties and saying "check out my
| blog at sheep dot horse."
| stock_toaster wrote:
| Reminds me of that old SNL sketch:
| https://snltranscripts.jt.org/99/99adillon.phtml/
| Jach wrote:
| Part of the joy is finding them serendipitously on your own
| though. Still, if you're not too fixated on the age and more
| interested in a place being a personal site, here's a thread
| with a random collection from a couple years ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22156868
| dhosek wrote:
| I've had a continuously updated record of my reading since
| 1995. It began as manually updated HTML and then I made a PHP
| script to back it with a database. I never got around to
| writing the admin page so I still update it with phpMyAdmin
| after writing the entries in TextEdit. Some day, when I have
| time, I may fix some of the CSS and other formatting issues,
| but I think most of the traffic it gets is me using it to
| refresh my memory about something I've read in the past.
|
| https://don.dream-in-color.net/books/
| rsolva wrote:
| I can recommended BookWyrm for this!
| WorldMaker wrote:
| I've traced archeological layers remaining in my blog all the
| way back to at least 1999. It's been on worldmaker.net and/or
| blog.worldmaker.net since 2002 as I recall. For a period in the
| 90s there was a "Zine" component, and the word "Blog" wasn't
| even invented yet. There are some big lost layers from database
| drops in the middle there. The most contiguous history seems to
| start around November 2004, with the most recent migration from
| databases to Git a "recent" 7 years ago in 2015.
|
| It's been a weird journey.
| justinlloyd wrote:
| I maintain a couple of personal websites, that aren't just
| "portfolio of work", that are my day-to-day stream of
| consciousness thoughts about things.
|
| I've maintained at least one diary-like personal website since
| 1992-ish or 1993-ish when domains could only be registered with
| one company, and cost a couple of hundred dollars, and you had to
| talk to someone on the telephone to get one. I post about one
| thought a day, sometimes two!
|
| And I've taken a lot of my "one thought a day" notes from
| physical notebooks and transcribed them to my website, along with
| photos of the notebook page. My collected thoughts go back to
| 1973 or so.
|
| As a kid I didn't read or write too well, but I had a tape
| recorder where I thought my thoughts (I had the idea from a Dr
| Seuss book as I recall). I can listen to six year old me thinking
| about things like how airplanes fly and why would a cup made of
| stone float in water and realise just how dumb I was as I thought
| about how these things work. But it is also interesting to look
| back and go "wow! that's me! That's my thoughts and my voice and
| my notes!"
|
| What helps with the writing is that I am under no allusions as to
| ever making any kind of profit or being popular. It truly is
| "just for me."
|
| Welcome to the end of the age of forgetting.
| ilaksh wrote:
| For me it is just hard to make a consistent effort to constantly
| promote my own content. Generally what I am motivated to put out
| there is deliberately contrarian, and that makes it even less
| likely for people to be interested. But whatever the reasons,
| after doing a couple of blog articles or pages and having almost
| 0 interest or comments, or maybe one shallow comment, I usually
| give up. There are just more interesting things to do with my
| time and energy.
| zafka wrote:
| This makes me smile. I have been maintaining a personal ( and
| sometimes business) website for over twenty years. I feel sort of
| responsible for keeping that 90's vibe alive.
| BaseballPhysics wrote:
| I've been doing the same, and have found myself really
| attracted to the ideas of the indie web. The internet is so
| incredibly corporatized these days, and I feel like independent
| blogs and websites are a critical bulwark that helps preserve
| open spaces on the internet.
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